


Mike and Harvey, Lulu May and Oliver

by ThatwasJustaDream



Series: Vet Visit [2]
Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, With Kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 17:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6620089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wouldn't be quite accurate to say a spunky, baby feline saved the day for them but... it didn't hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mike and Harvey, Lulu May and Oliver

**Author's Note:**

> Written to a prompt on the 1_million_words comm on LJ, namely 'Vet Visit.' In my head, this is a Season One version of the two of them, where they've barely begun to figure out that they really can't do without each other.

“You realize we don’t even allow people to sell their kids’ Girl Scout cookies here?”

Mike jumped about an inch off of his chair at the sound of Harvey’s voice headed toward his cubby. 

It was the last thing he’d expected to hear tonight.

“Yes, Harvey. I realize.”

“Yet here you sit … with a box full of kittens.”

Mike stared at his computer screen – wanted to tell Harvey to shove it, but it was true. There he sat. With a box of kittens.

“It’s not full anymore, thank God,” Mike nodded toward it on the shelf next to him. “I only have the two left. Want one?”

“The things you _do_ get away with…..”

“Look who’s talking.”

Mike did his best to sound disinterested but… _crap_ , it felt so frigging good to talk with him about something other than work. These very few personal words between them felt like sweet, sweet rain; like manna after his last three weeks in the desert, alone.

“May I?” Harvey peered into the box. Was reaching into the box.

“No, hey, don’t…. c’mon, seriously… don’t torture them.”

“Excuse me? Do you really think I’d harm a defenseless animal?”

“No, I…. just…they’ve had a long day.”

_Translation: I’ve had a long day._

Harvey barely seemed to hear him, though; was too busy inspecting the pound and a half of silver-grey fluff and fur now in his cupped hands.

"So… tell me about it," Harvey said.

"What?"

"How you got yourself wrapped up in someone else's pet population control problem. Ouch...dammit…."

The kitten had started rabbit-kicking his thumb and the heel of his hand; Harvey flipped it gently over, belly up, and removed the tiny claws one by one, letting the kitten gnaw at one side of his index finger - its teeth too small and jaw too weak, still, to do any damage. 

"My building's super was really … sad the other month,” Mike said, not sure why he was explaining at all. “His daughter thought Lulu May was sick, and they couldn't afford to take it to the.."

"Lulu May?"

"She's in high school. They got assigned the book. She named her cat after Holly Golightly…."

"They still read books in high school?"

".. anyway, Lulu May was not sick. Clearly. She was...."

"...not your problem. Yet here you sit....."

"If you say _box full of kittens_ again, I swear to God…. You should leave, anyway."

"Why?" Harvey had started rubbing a thumb over the furball's forehead and was watching it fall gradually asleep in his hand.

"Because this isn't somewhere you normally hang out, and..."

"It's going on eight at night. We're practically the last two on the floor."

"...it stands out. That you're hanging with me. And cats. And you are clearly not a cat person, so…."

"I could take this one," Harvey said it almost generally; not as much an offer as an observation. "It'd be nice having something else breathing in the apartment."

"No!" 

Mike heard it: How loudly it came out of his mouth. How harsh it sounded, even to his ears. Harvey flinched. Mike saw him flinch, though his gaze never left the kitten - which was now entirely comatose and boneless in Harvey's lightly jiggling hand.

"Why not?" Harvey asked it as softly as Mike had snapped.

 _'Because if I can't be with you, then it can't,'_ Mike thought, but didn't say out loud. _'Because I can't be happy knowing you have it ... that it has you… and I have zip.'_

"You'd toss it on the sidewalk as soon as you got sick of it," Mike heard himself say.

Harvey shot him a look that suggested the accusation was pretty weak tea. 

Then he carefully returned the kitten to the box, sliding it off his hand like a warm, fuzzy pancake from a spatula. The kitten mewled, waking up briefly, then scurried to curl itself around its larger, black-furred, ball-shaped sibling and was out again in a second. 

"They're cute," Harvey pronounced, reaching in to tap the black cat with an index finger. 

"You did not," Mike, deeply amused in spite of himself, couldn't keep it out of his voice. "You did not really just 'boop' that cat on the nose?"

"You act as if I was never a kid. Who maybe had pets," Harvey said, hands going into his pockets, slightest of smiles at what he'd obviously picked up on in Mike's voice. 

As if it had felt good to Harvey, too, the two of them talking this way.

"Did you have pets?"

"No. Some of my friends did, though," Harvey turned, walking away.

"You had friends?"

Harvey didn't acknowledge that one. He did stop, though, and Mike's heart both fell and rose as Harvey turned around and took a single step back toward him.

"I did not toss you out on the sidewalk. You do realize that, right?"

"Yeah,” Mike said. “I know.”

It was one of the few things he'd had to acknowledge to himself on a couple of recent, very sleepless nights. He hadn’t been tossed; he’d walked. 

"I recall asking you to stay."

"You knew what I wanted, Harvey. From you. And you still went out and…”

"No, you're wrong. I didn't. I had no idea you wanted me to yourself."

This was news. Mike’s eyes went unwillingly to Harvey’s, then back to his computer screen when the eye contact proved to be way too much to handle right this second.

"And what if you had known?"

He said it in a tone that made it clear he figured it wouldn’t have mattered, but….

"I could have considered it,” Harvey said. “Maybe…this wouldn’t have happened at all. Isn’t it grounds for forgiving me? For a sin I didn't know I was committing?”

Yeah. Right. After what Mike had seen? Had accidentally walked in on, sneaking in to surprise Harvey in his apartment on a Thursday night?

“I don’t know if I can make that happen.”

“If you don't....” he only half registered Harvey’s ‘what the hell am I supposed to do’ shrug. “Then how do we ever make up?"

Mike willed himself to say nothing, and succeeded; kept silent until Harvey gave in… and walked away.

~*~

"You have big rats in this place,” Harvey said, flipping fully onto his back.

He scooped the grey cat up in both hands as he did – holding it over his head like a longer, lankier Simba; alternately raising it up high and pulling it in for head butts as if he was bench pressing it.

“I named him Oliver,” Mike said, rolling onto his side, arm going over Harvey’s chest, a leg tangling with Harvey’s.

It had taken a couple of weeks for the forgiving and the making up and the re-meshing of their lives to happen. Another couple of months before they had any reason to stay at Mike’s instead of Harvey’s on a weekend. 

Oliver had grown a lot. Mike hadn’t mentioned that he’d kept him.

“Oliver Twist,” Harvey said, giving the cat a nose boop and then attempting to settle it in between them. “Because no matter how much you feed it…”

“It always asks for more. I can’t believe it’s not fat yet.”

“What about the black cat?” Harvey asked.

“Sherry from finance came by right after you left,” Mike said. “With her kid. Who was with her at work that day. Don’t laugh – I didn’t do so well on the deal; I’m bringing coffee for her, too, every day and I’ve gotta wash her car once a week for a year.”

“That’s…. perfect. Maybe you’ll think twice next time.”

“Oh,” Mike heard himself say. “That’s for damn sure….”

They slept that Saturday away; Oliver a feline hot water bottle slithered in between them.

And when Mike moved in with Harvey? Oliver settled into Harvey's place like he’d owned it all along. 

Which didn’t surprise either of them a bit, by that point.


End file.
